


growing pains

by hailingstars



Series: unbelievably unlikely (febuwhump 2020) [9]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Fluff and Humor, Gen, Hurt Tony Stark, Parent Tony Stark, Peter Parker is a Little Shit, Slip n Slides, The Sims 4, Tony plays the sims, Tony throws out his back, febuwhump 2020, graceless, he's getting old okay, retired tony stark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:54:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22667359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hailingstars/pseuds/hailingstars
Summary: “Too old for slip-n-slides, absolutely,” said Tony. “Old enough to risk your life on Avenger missions? Absolutely not.”Peter rolled his eyes and laughed. “You’re just jealous, Mr. Stark.”“Of what, exactly? Your voice cracks?”“My voice hasn’t cracked in a long time,” said Peter. Tony resisted the urge to tell it had just last week, that him and May were just pretending not to notice. “And no, you’re jealous that you’re actually too old to go on the slip-n-slide.”“Pete I saved this entire universe I think I can handle a wet piece of tarp.”ORTony can't handle a wet piece of trap and throws his back out trying to go down Morgan's slip-n-slide.Febuwhump day 11: graceless
Relationships: Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe) & Tony Stark, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: unbelievably unlikely (febuwhump 2020) [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1619662
Comments: 48
Kudos: 311





	growing pains

It was a bright day, a hot day, when Tony sat on his porch with a glass of lemonade and watched his grown ass teenage son belly flop on his daughter’s pink and yellow slip-n-slide. He slid down to the mini pool at the end, whooping and yelling and laughing, while Morgan jumped up and down cheering him on and Tony shook his head.

He took a sip of lemonade through a straw as Peter rose up out of the mini pool and shook the water from his hair, like a wet dog trying to get dry.

“You’re ridiculous,” Tony told him. He threw a towel at him he stepped up to join him on the porch.

“What? Why?”

Tony nodded at the slip-n-slide. “Those are meant children.”

“I’m noticing a trend,” said Peter. He plopped down in the chair next to him. “I’m only a not a child when it fits with your snark.”

“Too old for slip-n-slides, absolutely,” said Tony. “Old enough to risk your life on Avenger missions? Absolutely not.”

Peter rolled his eyes and laughed. “You’re just jealous, Mr. Stark.”

“Of what, exactly? Your voice cracks?”

“My voice hasn’t cracked in a long time,” said Peter. Tony resisted the urge to tell it had just last week, that him and May were just pretending not to notice. “And no, you’re jealous that you’re _actually_ too old to go on the slip-n-slide.”

“Pete I saved this entire universe I think I can handle a wet piece of tarp.”

“Ok sure, whatever you say.”

Tony glared him. His ungrateful teenager, who didn’t believe him, and dared to humor him.

“I can slip and slide with the slidyest.”

Peter laughed, then stopped when he caught Tony’s eye. “You’re being serious.”

“Completely,” said Tony. He stood up and left the comfort of his favorite outdoor chair and walked off the porch and into the grass. He heard Peter scramble to catch up with him.

“Mr. Stark- “

“Don’t try and change my mind, Pete, it’s happening,” Tony told him, getting a fantastic idea on his march towards the slip-n-slide as his eyes fell over Morgan’s bubbles.

He plucked the bright blue bottle off the grass, picked the wand out and discarded it, then proceed to dump them all over the slip-n-slide.

“Dad!” said Morgan. “Those are mine!”

“I’ll buy you more,” said Tony. “Right now I’m trying to prove a point to Peter.”

“He’s trying to break his leg!”

Morgan looked back and forth between the two of them. A sly smile formed on her lips and she crossed her arms. Her eyes were unreadable from behind her sunglasses. “Mommy says I should tell her whenever you’re about to do something stupid.”

“Sure, but then, you’d be a snitch.”

“So? I don’t care about being a snitch,” said Morgan. “But _I_ do care about having the best water gun for water wars day at school.”

It was pathetic, really, how often Tony let himself get blackmailed by his own child. His own _six-year-old_ child. Sometimes he worried about the world once she grew up. It didn’t stand a chance against her charm or her intelligence.

“Fine. Dad will get you a new water gun for your silence.”

“You can’t buy it, though. You have to make it. In the garage.”

Tony considered. Technically he was banned by Pepper from making improvised toys in the garage. She deemed them all unsafe after the he upgraded Morgan’s motorized princess car last summer. It hadn’t been Morgan who’d gotten hurt, but Happy, who got run down by a kid’s car going three times the speed it’d been meant to go.

There was one thing that would make breaking Pepper’s rule worth it, though.

“Is Miss Jan volunteering for water war day?”

“Uh huh,” said Morgan. “I think so.”

“Then sure, dad will make you a gun.”

“Okay!”

“Mr. Stark,” said Peter. He looked at the slip-n-slide with some trepidation. “I still think this is a bad idea.”

Tony shoved the empty bottle of bubbles into his chest. “Watch the master.”

He stared at the soaking wet, now slippery with bubble soap, slide in front of him. Peter was right. It was a bad idea, but he was Tony Stark and Iron Man. He survived countless bad ideas. He was sure he could survive this one.

Tony went at the slide with a run, meaning to flop down on it belly first, but instead tripping the water hose and falling onto the tarp on his side. His back cracked, flared with sudden pain, as the bubble soap carried him to the end of the slide. He stopped before he reached the mini pool, his nose just barely touching the inflatable ring surrounding it.

He let out an inaudible growl of pain.

“Dad,” said Morgan. “Can I go get mom now?”

“Yes please.”

*

As it turned out, Tony Stark, survivor of the universe, had met his match in the cursed wet piece of tarp, or at least his back had. He sat on the recliner in his living room, squirming around, and trying to get comfortable.

“Tony,” Pepper scolded, as she joined him with a cold pack. “Stop moving around. You’ll make it worse.”

“I’m replacing my back with tech.”

Pepper handed him the ice pack and sat down on the couch.

“I never have these problems with my prosthetic arm,” said Tony, carefully putting the ice pack behind him and lying on it. “I’m gradually going to become a cyborg so I’ll never age.” 

“Everyone gets old, Tony,” said Pepper, in a monotone voice, and it made Tony suspect she wasn’t really listening.

“Mr. Stark.”

Tony couldn’t turn his head, not without bothering the flare of pain in his back, so he was forced to wait until Peter came into his view. When he did, Tony saw he carried with him a laptop, that he handed over to him.

“What’s this?”

“I got you a present.”

“Peter I don’t know how to tell you this, buddy,” said Tony. “But I have an entire company that mass produces laptops that are –“ He examined the computer, just to be sure. “-of a lot better quality than this one.”

Peter rolled his eyes, then plopped himself down on the armchair of Tony’s recliner. “It’s not _just_ the laptop.”

He opened the top and clicked on a weird logo. Annoying theme music assaulted Tony’s ears. The words Sims 4 took over the computer screen.

“A computer game?”

“Yeah!” said Peter. “I just figured, since you’re going to be stuck in this chair, you need something to help you pass the time.”

“Thanks, kid,” said Tony. He didn’t plan on using his time as invalid to play some game, but he knew Peter would never let it rest if he said so out loud. “Just curious. How did you pay for this gift?”

“Uh, well. I used the credit card you gave me for emergencies,” said Peter. “And if you think about it, boredom _is_ an emergency.”

Tony blinked at him. The gift that had been bought for him with his own money sat in his lap, while a cold pack numbed his back. Truly, this was the part people left out when they talked about how amazing raising kids was.

*

The digital clock on the fireplace said it was 3:27 AM.

Tony was still in his chair, instead of being where he belonged, up in his bed being cuddled by Pepper.

At least the digital him was being cuddled. He watched his Tony sim and his Pepper sim sleep in their bed, speeding up time so that the Zs floating above their heads went fast. When his sim woke up, he had two hours to get to work and most of his needs were on red.

Tony hated this game, hated Peter for getting him hooked to it, hated that he couldn’t stop playing it.

Most of all he hated struggling for money. He was a billionaire, but he couldn’t figure out how to pay for things in Sims.

He picked up his phone, thumbed through the contacts, stopping only once he got to Peter’s name.

He answered on the third ring. There were crashes in the background. Screaming. “Hey Mr. Stark! What’s up?”

Tony frowned when he heard another loud bang. “Hey, Pete. You don’t happen to be out patrolling after curfew, do you?”

“What? No.”

Another loud bang sounded somewhere on the other end of the line.

“Uh huh,” said Tony, as he heard Peter yelling at someone, his voice sounding muffled, like he was wearing a mask. “You’re grounded.”

“Mr. Stark!”

“Go home, go to bed.”

“Fine,” said Peter. “I’m going.”

He disconnected the call, and it was only after the line went dead he remembered he had very important questions to ask Peter. Mainly, how the hell he was supposed to pay things in this game with his sims only bringing home a couple hundred dollars each day.

Tony sent him a quick text with his question and got an irritating response back.

_sorry mr stark i’ve been grounded and i’m not allowed to use my phone_

Tony growled. He hated children.

He spent the next several hours creating a Peter sim and grounding him over and over again.

*

Tony’s eyes were glazed over. He stared at the computer screen and put the final touches on the mansion he’d just built for his sim family.

He hadn’t needed Peter’s help to make money, not when he had the simmer community on YouTube and reddit to rely on. A few money trees later, he was rolling in cash, and his sims were happy, at least when he wanted them to be.

“Pepper!” shouted Tony. “Come look at my mansion!”

She stalked into the room, muttering under her breath about wanting to kill Peter. She could get in line.

“You know Tony,” she told him, bending her face down to peer into the computer screen. “It’s been a couple of days. I think you could probably start getting up, moving around a little bit.”

“Uh huh, sure,” said Tony, but he was more focused on clicking through all the rooms in his build, showing them off.

“Who are all these people in the basement?” asked Pepper. She squinted her eyes. “Is that – is that Ross?”

“Sure is. He’s one of my slaves. He stays in the basement and paints. Helps supports the mansion.”

“Oh my god,” said Pepper.

“That’s right, Pep, I’m their God.”

“You know the world should be glad you’re not nearly as controlling and evil as they like to say you are.”

Tony clicked back up to the ground level, where the Tony and Pepper sims were hopping into the hot tub.

“Hey that’s us,” said Pepper. She stretched her arm over Tony’s back. “What are we doing?”

“We’re woohooing in the hot tub.”

“Oh, interesting.” She kissed his cheek. “Maybe we should get a hot tub, you know, if you ever get out of this chair.”

*

When Peter visited next, Tony still wasn’t out of his chair.

As he clicked around his Sims world and showed it off to Peter, the boy seemed a bit terrified, a bit regretful, about what he’d unleashed in the Stark household.

“Why am I wearing a prison uniform?” asked Peter.

“Because in my world,” said Tony. “You’re indefinitely grounded. You don’t go out risking your life and breaking curfew and getting stabbed. You sit safely in your bedroom, writing books, and making me simoleons.”

Peter didn’t say anything. Just stared at the screen in horror.

“Don’t worry. You get yard time.” said Tony. “Hey watch this.”

Tony clicked on his Jan sim, then on the cowplant. It was an aggressive way to die, but if any of his sims deserved it, it was Jan.

They both watched as the weird cow styled plant ate Jan and didn’t spit her back out. The grim reaper appeared and Jan’s ern popped up on the screen and everything was right in the world.

“Mr. Stark,” said Peter. “I’m having regrets. I’m gonna need to take your present back.”

“Over my dead body.”

Peter backed out of the room. Without the laptop.

*

By the third day, Tony hummed the theme song under his breath while he waited for his game to load. It wasn’t so bad, he decided. It was kind of catchy. The logo spun around on his computer screen. It seemed to go slower and slower every day, as Tony bought more expansion packs and worked the laptop to its core.

He’d have to switch over to a better computer. Maybe build his own gaming computer. Maybe that was something him and Peter, the real Peter, could do together.

A series of noises caught Tony’s attention. Some clanking around from outside. Curious, he put the laptop on his tv tray and slowly rose up from out of his chair.

Tony was surprised when he stepped out on his porch, into the daylight, into another hot day, and looked to his left. A hot tub sat on the side of the house, and clanking was coming from that direction.

Peter sat on the ground, tools into hand and his face inside the interworkings of the hot tub. His concentration broke as Tony walked closed. He looked at him and smiled.

“Oh hey, Mr. Stark,” said Peter. He looked back at the tub. “Uh, this was supposed to be a surprise.”

“Still is, kid.”

Peter smiled. “Pepper ordered it. Said it’d be good for your back. I’m just giving it the old Stark upgrade.”

Tony chuckled and beamed with pride, the way he did whenever anyone of his kids caught a family tradition and repeated it. Granted May and Pepper probably wouldn’t be happy to know his tendency to improve the electronics they bought had been passed down to Peter, but they’d be better off for it.

Nothing beat a Stark upgrade. Except, Tony supposed, a Parker upgrade.

“You got out of your chair,” said Peter. “How’s real life?”

“It’s good,” said Tony, with a nod of his head, in awe of how much Peter had changed and grew since when they first met. “Better than good, actually.”

“Really? Even with me getting stabbed and putting myself in danger?”

Tony laughed. “Even then. You’re not you if you’re not giving me grey hair, Pete. Besides Queens needs its hero.”

“Yeah,” said Peter. “If he ever gets ungrounded.”

“Now you’re just becoming delirious.”

Peter laughed and pulled himself up off the ground, dusting himself up once he stood. “I think it’s ready. Wanna try it out?”

“Sure, kid.”

“I’ll get it running,” said Peter. “But I have head out to decathlon practice, so you’ll have some peace and quiet.”

Tony nodded his head, looking forward to the hot water that would sooth his aching back, and looking forward to a lifetime of getting old, a lifetime of watching his kids grow up and countless hours wasted away in front of his computer screen.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! and thanks to seekrest for giving me ideas and lines for Tony's sims playing!! 
> 
> kudos and/or comments let me know what you think! 
> 
> [come yell at me on tumblr](https://hailing-stars.tumblr.com)


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